A Trump victory would reward them. But not enough to justify the risks
The peninsula is becoming a death trap for the Kremlin’s forces
There is more to AI than ChatGPT
At a crucial moment they encapsulate the dilemma of how to handle populism
A backlash against abortion bans is energising the middle ground in America
They are saving like never before. But even that may not bring interest rates down
Economies must adapt to baby busts instead
As birth rates plunge, many politicians want to pour money into policies that might lead women to have more babies. Donald Trump has vowed to dish out bonuses if he returns to the White House. In France, where the state already spends 3.5-4% of gdp on family policies each year, Emmanuel Macron wants to “demographically rearm” his country. South Korea is contemplating handouts worth a staggering $70,000 for each baby. Yet all these attempts are likely to fail, because they are built on a misapprehension.
Governments’ concern is understandable. Fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere and the rich world faces a severe shortage of babies. At prevailing birth rates, the average woman in a high-income country today will have just 1.6 children over her lifetime. Every rich country except Israel has a fertility rate beneath the replacement level of 2.1, at which a population is stable without immigration. The decline over the past decade has been faster than demographers expected.
The death of the president changes the power dynamic
A new generation of AI chips is on the way
The rainbow nation needs an alternative to decline under the ANC
Rishi Sunak’s election call makes no sense, but is good news
Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible
At first glance, the world economy looks reassuringly resilient. America has boomed even as its trade war with China has escalated. Germany has withstood the loss of Russian gas supplies without suffering an economic disaster. War in the Middle East has brought no oil shock. Missile-firing Houthi rebels have barely touched the global flow of goods. As a share of global gdp, trade has bounced back from the pandemic and is forecast to grow healthily this year.
The assignment of judges to cases should be random, not political
Under Lawrence Wong, the city-state has a new chance to change
Despite Xi Jinping’s protestations, China does have an overcapacity problem
How to pacify the world’s most violent region
The Guardian Weekly (May 8, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Nowhere to call home’ – Inside Europe’s housing crisis…
Elections for the European parliament are less than a month away and far-right parties are predicted to make significant gains in many of the bloc’s 27 member states. The dire shortage of housing, leading to rising rents and property prices, is becoming a unifying focus for voters’ discontent with their current political leaders.
The issue has sparked protests from Amsterdam to Prague and Milan, as the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley, reports. The data is undeniably worrying as young Europeans spend up to 10 times an average salary on rent and mortgage payments, and big cities from the Baltic states to the Iberian peninsula have registered average property price rises of close to 50%. As a result more EU residents live with their parents for longer and put off life-decisions later into adulthood.
While housing does not fall within MEPs’ remit, it is a visible locus for the sense of social unease that has beset the whole bloc and has become a pivot for the far right to turn on racialised minorities. But as European community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam discovers, it is those communities that are doubly penalised through discrimination from landlords who, research has shown, turn away potential renters with “foreign” surnames. The political and social ramifications of the housing crisis in Europe is mirrored elsewhere across the globe and is a subject we will return to in the Guardian Weekly in this year of elections.
More co-ordination and better access to data are needed to fight lies
America’s reckless borrowing is a danger to its economy—and the world’s
Should American universities call the cops on protesting students?
Novels starring hot fairies are selling millions of copies
Why leaving the ECHR would be a bad idea for Britain
America, China and the battle for supremacy
Intelligence sources are concerned about the country, which is surrounded by Italy
The musician is at the height of her commercial, but not her creative, power
They are not doomed to be poor and anxious
The Congress party is set for a drubbing in the world’s biggest election
Instead it should try a novel response to Iran’s missile attack: restraint
His father, Ali, was born a Shiite Muslim from Iran. They met in the library at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, married in 1978, and eventually settled in Russellville, Arkansas. “I grew up in the Ozarks, so I didn’t have a deep connection to my Iranian heritage,” Sarjahani told me. His family had Christmas trees and celebrated Easter but also marked Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
It will disappoint China’s people and anger the rest of the world
That will make inflation trickier to handle in future
Donald Trump’s threat to dump allies would risk a nuclear free-for-all
Boomers Daily 